Rafael Levchin was born on the Crimean Peninsula, USSR, in 1946, studied in Leningrad and in Moscow (Literary Institute), lived in Kiev from 1970 to 1991, and in Chicago, USA since 1991. He has been in the underground art-groups: "postfuturists" ("metarealists") 1976-1983; underground theatre Chen-Dziu, 1982-1988; 39. 2° C, 1984-1988; Theater Club from 1985, then Neomythological Theatre, and International Theater Ensemble. He was published in Anthology of the Russian Vers Libre, Anthology of Unusual Stories and in magazines: New Circle, Mnogotochie, Oykumena, Commentaries, Stethoscope, Chernovik, and www.polutona.ru/?show=rafael. He is a ceramist, graphic, visual poet, and book-artist whose work is in private collections in Moscow, Kiev, Krakow, Bruges, Chicago, Miami, and Mexico. He is the publisher, editor-in-chief, art director of the multilingual samizdat-zine REFLECT... КУАДУСЕШЩТ. “I’m really obsessed about archetypes such as mask, great goddess, centaur, fish, warrior, demon, tower, labyrinth, circle, spiral, and their combinations, especially mask, because I believe that almost everything in our life can be some sort of mask. So I’m trying to revive them in ceramics, collage, graphics, painting, book-art, etc. From the beginning, the process of transforming material (clay, paper, wood) into artwork I feel myself as a magician, and I love this creative power. This obsession, based on memory, experience, and imagination, always exists in my work, sometimes mixed with dark humor, and sometimes with bright colors of love, because I love very much my wife, my sons, my town, my country, my planet, and my galaxy.”

Serge Levchin was born in Kiev, 1979 and has a BA from St. John's College, Annapolis. He studied Russian literature with Boris Gasparov at Columbia University and has worked subsequently as cinematographer, scriptwriter, film editor, researcher, subtitler, invariably at minimal wages. Polutona. See his website here.